Paul Goble
Staunton, Aug. 31 – Moscow has launched a major campaign to urge young Russians not to allow themselves to be recruited by Ukrainian agents for acts of sabotage, an effort that has led in the last week to the erection of billboards in St. Petersburg and the launch of a website at выход31.рф/.
The campaign's message is that young Russians are approached, they should turn down the Ukrainian agents and turn them into the Russian authorities. If they do so, they will not suffer the consequences that any participation in Ukrainian actions against Russia and may even be rewarded for their patriotism.
This effort, the full dimensions of which remain unclear, nonetheless highlights that a problem the Kremlin in the past has played down may be far larger than it has been prepared to admit (echofm.online/news/hladnokrovno-slilas-s-podzhoga-relejnogo-shkafa-v-peterburge-poyavilas-soczialnaya-reklama-gosudarstvennogo-proekta-pomoshhi-podrostkam-kotoryh-verbuyut-dlya-diversij).
As such, it is yet another indication that the steps the Kremlin is taking are likely to prove counterproductive with more young Russians and their parents concluding that those recruited by Ukrainian agents are now a widespread phenomena and either support them as a way to end the war or alternatively be willing to support an even more draconian response to sabotage incidents.
Either will cause the Kremlin problems. The fact that no one in the Presidential Administration appears to recognize those dangers is striking, an indication of problems descending from the top and likely making the coming weeks even more explosive in the Russian Federation than they have been and by a Russian action rather than a Ukrainian one.
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